Andrei Makine - The Earth And Sky Of Jacques Dorme

During the meal he sensed a strain in their voices, thanks both to the impossibility of admitting to what had happened and to shame. Shame that a foreigner had seen it. The only true fact he would learn over supper that evening would be the "rule," the words repeated automatically by the guards before the column of prisoners sets off: "One step to the left, one step to the right, and I shoot without warning."

That night, inside the dark cabin of the Douglas transport plane that was taking them back to their base, he stayed awake, his thoughts constantly returning to this strange country, whose language he already spoke well, which he believed he knew so well and which he failed to understand, which he sometimes refused to understand. Comparing it to France, he had a notion that left him even more perplexed: this country, too, was occupied. Like France. No, worse than France, for it was occupied from within by the regime that governed it, by the spirit of that rule – "One step to the left, one step to the right…"

The memory of that death stood in the way of the easy joy he had experienced before: in the soft bluish luminescence of the Bostons' instrument panels, so much more agreeable than the harsh lighting in Russian aircraft, the almost excessive comfort of the cockpit, and, upon landing, a system that responded perfectly Now, when he climbed out onto the runway, the memory of the prisoners in their single file and the man who had stumbled on an icy path came back to him.

At the end of August 1944, he recalled this man, but in a new way. That day he was feted by all his comrades, the pilots and the mechanics, from the morning onward: they had just learned of the liberation of Paris. As he responded to their congratulations, Jacques Dorme wondered what they knew about France. Interspersing their excited cries were references to the Paris Commune and Maurice Thorez – along with the name of Marshal Pétain, uttered with contempt and distorted by the lack of nasal sounds in Russian. He did not even try to explain, feeling himself to be relieved at last of the burden of the fall of France, for which, in conversation, they had sometimes seemed to reproach him. Now they were laughing, remarking that once Hitler had been driven out, the French people would settle the capitalists' hash and embark upon the building of Communism. A little dazed by their voices, he tried to imagine what kind of books they might have read about France. Alexandra's tale returned to his memory: the volume she had unearthed in the public library in a Siberian town, the domicile assigned to her. A collection of texts by French authors, translated into Russian, among them a poem that was a veritable "Hymn to the GPU"…

During his monotonous flights he pictured Paris, the popular jubilation, windows open to a fine summer sky.

And, more than anything, the café terraces, a life spent at tables, garrulous, carefree, made up of snatches of words, exchanged glances, the complicity of bodies brushing against one another… Through a fine layer of cloud, beneath the Boston's wings, bristled the peaks that arose from the endless Kolyma plateau, still tinged with green and gleaming with watercourses. "In a few days' time," he thought, "all this will be white. Devoid of life…" All that remained would be the rows of rectangles, the barrack huts and watchtowers of a camp, reliable beacons for the pilots in the midst of this mountainous vastness with no landmarks. The only point of reference the thousands of human lives concentrated together here in this nothingness. In his mind's eye he again pictured the little round tables on the café terraces and reflected that the author of the "Hymn to the GPU" might well be sitting at one of those tables at that very moment, talking to a woman, ordering coffee or wine, commenting on the past, criticizing the present, celebrating the future. Jacques Dorme suddenly realized that you could never make that poet understand the infinity that now lay beneath the wings of the plane, nor the rule: "One step to the left, one step to the right," nor the death of the prisoner who stumbled… No, impossible. He felt something like a muscular spasm locking his jaws. Down there, at their café table, what they were speaking was a different language.

In the course of that flight Jacques Dorme saw himself for the first time as a foreigner in the land of his birth.

He did not immediately recognize the man in black leather. Indeed, this one bore scant resemblance to the little inquisitor who had killed Witold. Still less to the second one, the fat, hysterical one with his orders for an overloaded plane to take off. Those two had spread terror when the war seemed lost, they were more afraid than the servicemen they threatened. The man Jacques Dorme beheld in December 1944 already had a victor's self-confidence. He was short and thin, like the first one, but his leather coat was lined with thick fur. He shook its lapels when a little frost fell on them from a propeller, the specifications of which, no one could understand why, were the subject of his inquiries. His curiosity was disconcerting. The pilots felt as if they were undergoing an interrogation in which the excessively simple questions were merely a way of confusing the person interrogated. Occasionally he smiled, and Jacques Dorme noticed that at once the smile would vanish from other people's faces.

The man inspected the aircraft, asked his strange questions that would have been considered stupid if they had not contained hidden catches, never listened to the complete answer, and smiled. Everyone realized he had come because the war was about to end and back in Moscow they needed to issue a reminder of who was master. However, what the pilots could not yet guess was that soon the Americans, who were supplying these countless Douglases, Boeings, and Airacobras, were going to become enemies again and that all those who had taken part in this air bridge would come under suspicion. The man in black leather was already there to spot the lost sheep, to guard against ideological contagion.

At the end of his inspection he summoned those in charge of the base and the "leaders" of the squadrons. He talked about the slackening of Communist discipline, the lowering of class vigilance, and in particular castigated them over the organization of flights. "The command staff have tolerated total anarchy," he rapped out. "Bombers have been flying in the same groups as fighter aircraft and transport planes. I advise you to put an end to this chaos. Fighter planes must fly with fighters and bombers with…"

The pilots exchanged furtive glances, scratching their heads. They were secretly hoping that the man in leather would suddenly burst out laughing and exclaim in jocular tones: "I had you fooled for a moment!" But his voice remained accusatory and steely. When he spoke of flight plans being incorrectly drawn up, one of the pilots spoke up, belatedly, as if it had taken him time to bring himself to do so: "But, Comrade Inspector, a Boston has means of communication that are much more…" What he intended to say was that a bomber was better equipped with navigational aids than a fighter. The man in black leather lowered his voice almost to a whisper, and it was this menacing hiss that stopped the pilot short, better than a shout would have done: "I see, Comrade Lieutenant, that your contacts with the capitalist world have not been wasted on you…"

For several moments of heavy silence all that could be heard was the lashing of the blizzard unleashing its fury against the windows and the crunch of the gravel the prisoners were spreading over one of the runways. Quite physically, in his bones, Jacques Dorme sensed how fine the line was in this country that separated a free man, this flying officer staring in silence at his big hands as they lay on the table, from those prisoners whose only identity was a number stitched onto their padded jackets.